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Clockwise from left: the Calm City Meditation Station; founder, Kristin Westbrook; and her associate, Mike D'Amore.

Photos of Westbrook and D'Amore courtesy of Francesca Magnani.

Kristin Westbrook knows how hard it is to meditate in Midtown Manhattan. When the creative director worked in Rockefeller Center in 2015, she always came up short when looking for a place for her afternoon meditation sessions. Her office had an open floor plan — no chance of a quiet disconnect there. Sitting with her eyes closed in nearby atriums worked out okay, but she still desired a place of greater calm: To really get deep into her meditation, she needed to feel safe from interruptions.

By then, Westbrook had already been practicing mindfulness-based breathing meditation for 14 years, which was essential during two separate breast cancer diagnoses in 2010 and 2012.

“It was really beneficial in helping me navigate the healthcare system and all the diagnostic tests, surgeries, PET [positron emission tomography] scans, and treatments,” she says. “And it helped me stay focused on the moment rather than running down these paths to the future.”

That ability to be able to step back and watch your mind work — and to notice what’s making you both crazy and more sane — is a natural result of meditation, according to Joe Loizzo, MD, PhD, founder and director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science and assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

“Meditation gives you the presence of mind to shift your focus from negative or unrealistic thoughts and habits to more positive, realistic, and healing ones,” he says, adding that the practice also helps to increase neural plasticity, which he says can “shift and reset our minds and nervous systems so we’re more prepared to live well and healthily, and to change in the ways we want to be able to — or need to — change. “

Westbrook was building on her practice in 2015 by learning transcendental meditation, in which you silently repeat a word, sound, or phrase in a particular way to help the body and mind arrive at a place of rest and inner peace. The practice is generally done twice a day — once in the morning and again in the afternoon, which cut into Westbrook’s workday.

It was in the middle of this search for quiet in Midtown Manhattan that Westbrook had an idea: “Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a pod on every corner, like Superman’s phone booth, where you could pop in, transform with a quick meditation session, and get back to your day?” Perhaps something similar to a food truck, she thought.

The idea for a mobile meditation studio slowly began to take shape, and once she settled on using a truck herself, Westbrook spent four months testing out various vehicle options and settings. In the end, she opted for a 1976 GMC Vandura RV that she transformed into a place of tranquility.

“I wanted to take something that already existed and turn it into something else — something resembling wood and nature,” says Westbrook. The result was nine green Sunbrella-upholstered cushioned seats with back supports situated above a wooden floor. Westbrook also installed cubbies under each seat for meditators to store personal items and prevent clutter.

The Calm City Meditation Studio Hits the Road

After another four months of renovations, Calm City Meditation Station, as Westbrook dubbed the wagon, went for its inaugural run in May 2017. Her associate, Mike D’Amore, parks the 24-foot RV at spots throughout the city, and they then invite people inside to meditate.

Up to nine people can fit inside the mobile studio for a 10-minute guided meditation session.

Once inside Calm City, Westbrook, who completed a 100-hour meditation teacher training with the Nalanda Institute, gives a brief introduction to both the mobile studio and the practice. A 10-minute audio-guided meditation then commences; these take place every 15 minutes for $10 per person. Meditators are free to keep their shoes on, and stools are provided for feet that don’t quite hit the floor.

Westbrook typically takes the mobile studio out three days a week to different neighborhoods around the city, both for the general public and corporate events. She says she specifically wanted to create a group setting so that meditators could get energy from the people around them and build community while they recharge.

But most importantly, she wants to provide the kind of outlet that gave her so much support while she was going through her health ordeals.

“Especially during my second breast cancer diagnosis, I was rebuilding my framework for how to live on a day-to-day basis, and meditation was a tremendous asset for my health. It would have been very difficult to face those challenges without some sort of superpower, and that’s what you get from jumping into Superman’s phone booth — aka Calm City — you get grounded centeredness.”